Throne of Thunder LFR Opens Another Wing Today
Don't forget that another section of the Throne of Thunder LFR will open today! AskMrRobot has a nice blog post up about how to spend your bonus rolls and what all of the output means.

You can find the encounter journal and loot tables for the next 3 bosses on the pages linked below, and boss guides over at Icy Veins.

Patch 5.3 PTR Changes Clarifications
Tonight's PTR build demonstrated why you should always wait before complaining about changes. We can only report changes made to the tooltips, so when tooltips are not updated completely you don't get the full story. Ghostcrawler was nice enough to address some of the concerns anyway!

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Character
In vanilla, having an alt was very difficult. In Cataclysm it was very easy. We're just shifting things back a tiny bit. (Source)and that sucks. Making me drift from the game.
That's not our goal. But there is a fine line between "my alt is too hard to play" and "I have nothing to do on my alt." (Source)
Also not our intent, but we don't want everyone to be at 11 maxed out alts on their account with nothing to do. (Source)

Might surprise you, but a lot of people find professions fun. Need to tune out the instant gratification crowd.
I think the question is: would you have the prof alts if your main could do all profs? Do you like the professions or the alts? (Source)so leveling in mop is so boring and painfull to disourage us from having too many professions?common
Not sure how you concluded that from my comments. (Source)he's arguing, rightly, that you've expressed you don't want players to have autonomous access to all profs.
He's arguing with some strange cart and horse placement. (Source)you're the one who so often says all players' input has some value, no? Isn't his point apparent, if not eloquent?
He was attempting to use my discussion of professions to argue that we made mop leveling "boring and painful." (Source)Would not be first time you've wanted more player(LFR) interdependence(LFR) than players(LFR) want(LFR).
Not the word I would use. IMO WoW is most fun when it's enjoyed socially. We worry the solo LFR guy won't be a long-term player. (Source)Funny how you have removed all the social aspects from the game then, if you want people to enjoy it that way.
We worked hard to give players a lot to do, which was important. But I agree it came at a social expense. Next problem to solve. (Source)

I don't want to quest on the alt. Way things are set up, dailies feel mandatory
But questing is a big part of the game. You do have options (such as dungeons or PvP) but they aren't designed to be as efficient. (Source)

I understand your reasons you want give single chars a lot to do. Thats great. But that does not mean you need to punish alts
The purpose of having an alt, for us, is to play them. Too many catch-up mechanics means you don't have to play them. (Source)But does that mean you need to repeat every single accomplishment the player already did?
No, and you generally don't have to. Things like commendations, heirlooms and even making bags for your alt give you a big leg up. (Source)But repeating double gate removals and reputations grinds burns out players. Why aren't those brick walls account specific?
Because then your alt doesn't have to quest. You earn valor and then get another raid-geared character. And then what? Make a 3rd? (Source)Really, this is not to annoy you. I appreciate your work. But.. alts aren't the target group of mop as it seems
No, it's cool. I'm just trying to unravel the apparent paradox of wanting to have an alt but not wanting to have to play that alt. (Source)you define play here very differently than many. I'll endure a grind for my main, but alts are for fun, and grinding sucks.
I'll counter that with "grind" is a word players use when they want the rewards but not the steps it takes to get them. (Source)I honestly don't understand this response. Are you saying people upset about the grind are whiners?
I'm saying "grind" is a pejorative word that has a mushy definition and tends to get overused. (Source)Well then what kind of conversation can we have? I can't call a duck a duck without it being apparently a pejorative term.
Some words just lose their meaning through careless use. Grind is one of them, along with clunky, scaling and benched. (Source)and Epic. Your company really needs to stop using Epic. It's in he same teir as this other words you describe
It's true. (Source)

Could there be a sliding scale, so toon#3 took less time than toon#2, toon#4 less than toon#3, for altoholics?
Yeah, honestly, that's more of what we're going for. Just trying to figure out that scale. 50% of the time of the first? 10%? (Source)

It's not about not playing it, it's about the burden to repeat everything that the player already did.
But isn't that what an alt is all about - replaying the game through a different view? Otherwise we could just offer class respec. (Source)Mounts are a great example. They are account shared.
Yes, and so are achievements. Rep could be, or even valor, loot or char level, but at some point you'll have nothing left to do. (Source)Why should a char level not be at 90 automatically? Because i learn the class on leveling it. I need to find out how it works
Not sure how important that is anymore. Respec Feral to Balance is a big difference. Also many spells have less use at low level. (Source)

catchup mechs are not "play", work. Without loot as carrot, raiders would play,so would(and do)gladiators. Who'd daily or lfr?
Disagree. Many raiders would stop without loot as a carrot. Players tend not to do activities that have no loot incentive. (Source)
Part of that is on us to come up with rewards besides loot, but loot is still the most proven effective reward. (Source)glads do. Point is lfr and dailies are endured for loot; raiding is -fun-.
Consider that we could have made WoW a game about running instances or even raids. We didn't. There are reasons for that. (Source)

As you may know, the Warhound was removed very early in the Heart of the Swarm public beta test because we felt that its role overlapped with the Marauder a bit too much. Mechanically, these two units were virtually identical, but were produced from two different buildings. It’s never an easy decision to remove a unit, but this decision was particularly tough because we absolutely loved the Warhound’s art.

After watching the MLG Winter Championship, we noticed that Life was able to beat Flash a little too easily in the finals. Had Flash been able to build Warhounds, our favorite race (Terran) may have won the tournament. As usual, we made a spur-of-the-moment decision based on this match and immediately set about rebalancing the game.

Accordingly, we reintroduced the Warhound into our internal builds for testing purposes. It felt great to have the Warhound back when we played as Terran, but when we played against them using our favorite race (Zerg), it somehow felt very wrong. Obviously, we couldn’t have that, so we decided that we must also give the Warhound to Zerg.

After putting some more thought into it, we realized that our favorite race (Protoss) was getting the short end of the stick because it was the only race without the Warhound. That’s when it came to us: Protoss should have it as well, since one of our main goals in StarCraft II was to create as much symmetry as possible amongst all three races.

So after considering every angle, here’s what’s changing:

The Warhound has been added for Terran because robots are cool and the art is amazing

The Warhound has been added for Zerg to remain competitive with Terran.

The Warhound has been added for Protoss to keep Protoss players from whining about them on the forums.

While we know these changes are drastic, we encourage everyone to log in and spend some time playing before rushing to judgment. We welcome you to share your thoughts, but this time around we’re not going to be listening to feedback.

For more information on the story behind the Warhound please check out the Warhound Q&A and the latest entry in our StarCraft short story series “Command Performance”.

ElvUI April Fools
ElvUI had a nice April Fools joke waiting for people when they logged in today!

its funny because i use elvUI and that didnt happen to me, what they did on mine was something along the lines of "Thank you for your contribution, we have dedicated all your hard earned gold to charity" lol

its funny because i use elvUI and that didnt happen to me, what they did on mine was something along the lines of "Thank you for your contribution, we have dedicated all your hard earned gold to charity" lol

The Pegasus models look AWESOME... aside from the whole 'horse on a hippogryph skeleton' thing... Seriously... They need to sit down, and make the Headless Horseman's mount have a clone, and add a wing mesh to it, so Tyrael's Charger, Invincible, Celestial Steed, and these Pegasus could look less like rubberized bad renditions of double jointed, stubby-legged horses, and more like the mind shattering awesome creatures they are actually intended to be! I would LOVE the Pegasus, and while I will want to get one, I doubt I will ride it much at all because of the fubar'ed flight animation. Invincible is the only mount that semi-hides the severe brokenness of the skeleton it is on, due to being armored in the way it is, and half rotted. The Pegasus fixes the missing back end of the hooves that all of the prior models have, but... it's not enough.